Teenage Girls

Yoga's popularity has spawned niches galore. There's yoga for golfers, pregnant women, even dogs. Now teenage girls can learn the benefits of this ancient practice in "Um, Like ... Om: A Girl Goddess's Guide to Yoga" (Little, Brown & Co., 2005). * 'Um, Like ... Om: A Girl Goddess's Guide to Yoga': Author Evan Cooper remembers what it was like to be a teenager and the angst that went with it.

The leader of a human trafficking and prostitution ring that lured teenage girls from the Inland Empire was sentenced Monday to 30 years in federal prison. Paul Edward Bell, 30, pleaded guilty to sex trafficking and admitted to forcing four girls between 15 and 17 years old into working as prostitutes in Lynwood and Compton, the U.S. attorney's office said in a statement. Bell, a Lynwood gang member, led a ring that involved at least eight people, including three lead prostitutes, who “groomed” girls into prostitution and eventually trafficked them to Los Angeles.

When five teenage girls take their places to play bells aboard the parade floats in the Gion Festival in Kyoto, Japan, next week, they will be the first to do so in 300 years. Since the 18th century, the upper deck of the floats, considered a sacred stage for court musicians, has been off limits to women. "Times have changed," said Shigeru Fukami, head of the organizing association. "We can no longer find a convincing reason to keep rejecting women from participating."

A man who stalked teenage girls was put to death in Huntsville for killing one of the girls' mothers during a burglary in 1994. Michael Moore, 38, appeared to choke back tears as he expressed love for his family and sought forgiveness for the slaying. "I'm sorry. I can't take back what I have done," he said, looking at the victim's relatives, who watched through a window. The nine-year Navy veteran was arrested the morning of the slaying about 50 miles southwest of Waco.

The mayor of Gloucester denied a Time magazine report that a group of girls entered a pact to become pregnant. "Any planned blood-oath bond to become pregnant, there is absolutely no evidence of," Carolyn Kirk said after meeting with school and health officials. At least 17 high school girls are expecting babies in the seaport 30 miles north of Boston. The 1,200-student high school has four times as many teenage girls expecting babies as it did last year. Kirk attributed the sharp rise in pregnancies to a lack of health education funding and the media's "glamorization of pregnancy."

July 17, 2013 | By Titania Kumeh, This post has been corrected. See note at the bottom for details.

In 2011, the birthrate for teenage girls in California dropped to its lowest level since 1991, a state report released Wednesday announced. Twenty-eight children were born in the state for every 1,000 teenage girls, a sharp decline from 1991 when the rate peaked at 70.9 births for every 1,000 teenage girls. Public health experts say state laws are responsible for the decline because they require public schools that offer sex education classes to provide scientifically reliable instructions on how contraceptives work along with information about abstinence.

Re "Stalking the Web Predator," Jan. 17: Reading about Julie Posey's fight against Web predators, I ask: What is the matter with our humanity that it produces specimens looking for unnatural satisfactions that by our post-Victorian society are classified as sick? When my computer says "you have mail" and I discover that my privacy was again invaded by messages of what teenage girls are doing--or other kinky exploitations--my blood starts to boil. I am familiar with the birds and the bees, but those messages are molestations of the mind and body.

Police are searching for three teenage girls who allegedly tied up a counselor from their group home at knifepoint Tuesday and fled in one of the home's vans with another resident who may have been kidnapped, authorities said. "They brandished a knife at the counselor," said Gina Tepoorten, a San Jose police spokeswoman. "They threw her down to the ground, grabbed her, tied her up, and got the keys to the van."

This paperback novel is from the author of the novel and subsequent film "The Best Little Girl in the World" and is similar in its fictionalized treatment of a psychiatric disorder found primarily among teenage girls and young women. "The Best Little Girl" was about anorexia nervosa. Steven Levenkron's new book is centered on self-mutilation. The central character is a teenage figure-skating champion with an abusive mother. To deal with the pressures of her life, she begins cutting herself.

London Mayor Boris Johnson, on an evening bicycle ride, rescued a woman who was being threatened by a group of girls wielding a metal bar, the mayor's office said. Documentary filmmaker Franny Armstrong was confronted by the teenage girls, who pushed her against a car Monday night as she was walking in North London, news reports said. She said she saw Johnson on his bicycle and shouted to him. Johnson picked up the metal bar, which was more than a yard long, and cycled after the girls, Armstrong said.